A web space devoted to mindscum, with an unflinching look at hard reality as it crushes us all under its wheels

03 November 2014

Of a Dog, a Landslide, and a Speech

O

n this day in history (according to Wikipedia and the BBC) the
Russians launched a dog into space in 1957, Lyndon Johnson beat the shit out of
Barry Goldwater in a landslide election in 1964, and Richard Nixon called on
the “Silent Majority” to support his war effort against a vocal
minority who had the temerity to object to being shipped off as cannon-fodder
in a “limited” war that never seemed to end.

What do these events have in common, other than the date?
Probably nothing, except that each of them is something I actually remember,
something that struck me about it at the time. Getting into space excited me as
a child; I wanted to be part of it—but I felt sad for the sacrifice of the dog
the Russians hurled into the great unknown. As a teenager the Goldwater-Johnson
election was the first race that I felt I had a stake in; Goldwater terrified
me with his plans to escalate a war in support of a corrupt government in a remote
part of the world, and I was afraid his presidency would lead inevitably to a
nuclear war. (I think I still have a drawing I did at the time showing the
earth in rubble with the only intact artifact being a pro-Goldwater sign. And I’ve
written before about the stark insanity of Nixon’s speech about how we, the
American people, should sit down and shut up. It was none of our business how a war
that might take our own lives (or the lives of our family-members or friends) was
conducted. Nixon had a plan. A plan to get us out of that war Goldwater wanted
so desperately to get us into. As a joke of the time had it, They said if I voted for
Goldwater we’d be dropping bombs on Vietnam. Well I did, and we are.